Fight This Information War with KISSes
I believe in the KISS principle: keep it simple, stupid. I do my best to boil events down to their essential truths and then hammer those truths again and again. Repetition is my weapon of choice.
The reason I stick to this strategy has nothing to do with who is reading. It has to do with the nature of the war we are already fighting. Never before in human history have people been so bombarded by lies and propaganda from their own political leaders. The information warfare that the U.S. government and other Western nations use against their own peoples is meant to conquer minds with direct programming instead of directed bullets.
How do you counter-program people who have been indoctrinated for years, if not decades? You KISS them, so that they’ll KISS others, and a steady flow of simple truths can begin to crack the glass of our invisible cage. The whole thing sounds quite dirty and promiscuous, but constantly reminding ourselves what is actually true in a blizzard of lies is an admirable pursuit. Crafty French diplomat Talleyrand, who managed to keep his head through both the French Revolution and the reign of Napoleon, observed, “Speech was given to man to conceal his thoughts.” The Marxist globalists who use censorship and propaganda as shield and sword are Talleyrand’s ardent disciples.
The size of the information war being conducted against us is astounding, and because the formerly free press has been conquered and conditioned to support the State, news outlets willing to report the truth are few. When the corporate news cartel controls 95% of the information flow and the Department of Homeland Security is effectively censoring the remaining 5%, it becomes essential for those of us who see this war as it really is to sound a little like broken records. Using labels such as “Deep State,” “Uniparty,” “Marxist globalists,” “ruling class,” and “elites” is a form of subversive branding meant to align us against a common enemy. “Make American Great Again” is more than a jingle or campaign slogan; it is an attempt to cut through artificial political divisions so that abused citizens can find common purpose. Rejecting “woke” dogma, “political correctness,” and other Marxist distortions of truth is a form of mental armor that defends against the government’s unabating propaganda. Repetition of simple truths must meet the repetition of outrageous lies head-on.
Why do I bring this up? Because the information warfare leveled against us is going to become much worse. A Canadian court recently ruled that describing drag queens who perform in front of children as “groomers” is not “protected speech.” Western governments’ war against moral virtue has become so obscene that those who abuse children have become a legally protected class. “Hate speech” laws — that novel approach by Marxist globalists to criminalize all dissent — are silencing people throughout the West.
Before you assume that the First Amendment will prevent Canada’s love for depravity over free speech from fully metastasizing down here, remember this: the U.S. government’s terrorist watch list is now over two million people worldwide, including thousands of Americans here at home. Although the O’Biden administration has made it clear that Iran (the world’s leading State sponsor of terrorism) and Hamas (a bunch of vile murderers and rapists) are its friends, it has gone out of its way to use the FBI to hunt Christians, concerned parents, pro-life Americans, and Trump-supporters as “domestic terrorists.” Since when has the federal government ever worried about a suspected (non-leftist) terrorist’s free speech? What happens when a hundred and fifty million Americans discover that they are now seen as “terrorists”? With enough intimidation, the national security surveillance State expects that dissent will disappear like a puff of smoke. As Brandon Smith wrote recently in an essay dissecting information warfare, “The globalists view public manipulation and social engineering as their birthright. They think it’s their manifest destiny, and they suggest often that humanity would somehow decay and self-destruct without their influence.” Those who keep it simple and stand their ground, though, may force the Marxist globalists to one day face their Waterloo.
I have met few people with a perfect track record of seeing through the government’s propaganda over the last twenty years. Not everyone saw the PATRIOT Act as a dangerous step toward an all-powerful surveillance State. Not everyone saw through the Russia collusion hoax. Not everyone recognized the early steps of the federal government’s manipulation of social media as a mass censorship campaign against the American people. Not everyone recognized the mass hysteria over COVID as a complex, multi-pronged battle plan meant to manipulate the 2020 election and convince terrified people to surrender their own liberties. Not everyone recognized the war in Ukraine as a money-laundering operation for politicos, bankers, and industrialists. Be patient with those who do not clearly see things as quickly as you do, because we have all had the wool pulled over our eyes at some point in life.
The government is exceedingly effective in its information warfare because it, too, keeps it simple. Diplomats of the “woke” faith repeat dopey lies — such as “men can menstruate” — with such gusto that even religious leaders who should know better begin spreading those same lies as “truths.” Politicians use our morality against us when they say things such as, “We’re all in this together,” and good people can get caught in those empathy traps. Military spokespeople use our patriotism against us when they insist, “If we don’t fight them over there, we’ll fight them over here,” and it is easy for warriors to end up volunteering for the wrong wars. My point is this: however much you think you know, chances are that the U.S. government has conditioned you to believe at least some damaging lie in the course of your life. Have compassion for those who are just now waking up to the reality of our situation, and state the truth calmly and simply, again and again.
NYU professor Mark Crispin Miller, a scholar who has written much about propaganda, says bluntly:
The media has been crucial to this entire operation, and ... I would say since the beginning of 2020, we have been subjected to a “Rolling Thunder of Propaganda.” First, there was the virus panic. Then, there was the George Floyd moment. ... There was the 2020 Election. There was the so-called “insurrection.” That was a wave of crackpot hysteria. ... Then, there was Ukraine, and the entire backstory of Russia’s invasion was completely missing from all the coverage. ... To say the press has failed abysmally is actually giving them too much credit.
While you see through the media’s obvious lies, too many Americans still see them as obvious truths. It is far easier to accept outrageous deceptions than to accept that our most trusted institutions habitually distort reality. The only way out of this psychological war is to confront falsehoods, mock propaganda, and speak honestly — again and again, until you break the government’s spell over the enchanted.
As the great James Howard Kunstler wisely advises: “Remember, you are a sovereign individual and the blob in our nation’s capital city is an undifferentiated mass of feckless protoplasm. You contain a cosmos of ideas and aspirations. The blob is an agglomeration of sham and failure. The blob stands for itself, not for our country. You and I can stand for our country.”
My advice for emancipating others from their mental straitjackets is straightforward: acknowledge that there is good and evil in this world, and commit yourself to fighting evil. Because we are in an information war, recognize that every lie must be confronted before it is allowed to subvert important truths. Repeat what is true often. And always keep it simple.
Image via Pxhere.